Super Bowl: Usher’s half-time show, the ads, Taylor Swift and everything but the football – as it happened | Culture

Key occasions

Recreation over

Benjamin Lee

So Usher got here, conquered and made everybody miss the 2000s. Beyoncé turned a thankless-on-paper Verizon advert right into a technique to make a significant album announcement, dropping two new nation tracks. And Taylor had her romantic comedy ending, her boyfriend successful the Tremendous Bowl.

It was a giant night time for reluctant sport-watchers, given all the movie star motion, if not an extended one for these holding onto see how Taylor would congratulate her fella. If something, we noticed much less of her than we anticipated, most likely a response to a number of the miserly NFL viewers who has been complaining of late.

Anyway, off to go take heed to 8701…

Adrian Horton

The facility of TNT, as they’re known as, has been so inescapable, so ubiquitous, that the film rom-com ending of a brilliant bowl win felt inevitable. Right here is the large second, that I’m certain we’ll hear about someday in a tune.

Benjamin Lee

A reminder of tonight’s massive information:

Benjamin Lee

Can we not?

Up to date at 23.08 EST

Benjamin Lee

Martin Lawrence has yoghurt energy

A traditional Tremendous Bowl advert combo right here of an entertainer – comic and actor Martin Lawrence – and an athlete – legendary soccer tight finish Shannon Sharpe. They’re attempting to Coke Zero yoghurt – AKA flip one thing usually geared towards a feminine viewers towards males.

Adrian Horton

E*Commerce infants burn pickleball

Perennial Tremendous Bowl advert favorites the E*Commerce infants are again, and taking goal at a worthy goal: the grownup fixation that’s pickleball. “It’s mainly tennis for infants, however for adults,” says certainly one of them. “It ought to be known as wiffle-tennis,” says the opposite. Burnt!

Adrian Horton

Kansas Metropolis group wins – or, extra precisely, Taylor Swift wins, and celebrates accordingly.

Benjamin Lee

…

Benjamin Lee

Right here’s a glance again at a number of the massive celebs of the night time:

Benjamin Lee

Is she gonna make it?

Adrian Horton

Daddy Classes hive, we’re so again – the primary two songs off of Renaissance Half II, Beyoncé’s country-tinged upcoming album, ship on her long-teased promise of becoming her peerless voice round some twang.

Texas Maintain ’Em, the tune teased on the Instagram put up and teased in her Verizon advert, is the extra straightforwardly nation of the 2, with lilting acoustic guitar and discuss of bars and hoedowns (plus a cocked handgun within the visualizer). Soulful and sassy, Beyoncé guarantees to “take it to the dive bar we all the time thought was good” and, true to her spin on the style, beckons “don’t be a bitch, come to take it to the ground now”.

16 Carriages is the weightier monitor, each in manufacturing and theme. Although it opens with acoustic chords and metal guitar twang, the tune in the end goes into rock-tinged ballad mode, with verses flowing into hip-hop cadence. A traditional, instantly distinct Beyoncé genre-bender, with some seemingly private admissions about “leaving residence at an early age” and being, at one time, “underpaid and overwhelmed”. Some trademark nation tune grit and wrestle right here.

Up to date at 22.44 EST

Benjamin Lee

Okay that is the final one, I swear:

Adrian Horton

Go the lighter

As soon as once more, Bic will get Martha Stewart and her inconceivable mates, well-known stoners Willie Nelson and Snoop Dogg, collectively for a 30-second spot through which Willie borrows (and retains) Snoop’s EZ Attain lighter for his floating candles and torch wick and presumably different issues.